I began reading The Mcdougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss
I got almost to the end of the 2nd chapter and decided I had to reread what I’ve already read but with a highlighter. So, really I’ve almost read four (4) chapters. So there.
Anyway…I have found Dr. McDougall’s very straightforward, non-patronizing, non-guilt-mongering tone to be very refreshing. First of all, his book doesn’t read like so many other weight loss books do — either overly perky or dramatically preachy. In fact, he lets on straight away that the feelings of guilt and failure that most mainstream marketed diet programs lead to are not right and unnecessary. Not only that, but the starvation method that generally leads to those feelings is absolutely wrong.
The notion that these two very basic instincts [-- the desire to look beautiful or the desire to eat -- ] are in opposition is not only wrong, but downright self-destructive. It is this cultural delusion that promotes guilt and frustration, and…helps to keep people overweight. (The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss, Chapter 1, p. 1)
If you feel hungry, your body is telling you something important. Don’t ignore it. I suppose it’s like what they say if you feel pain. If you feel pain doing something, stop doing that something. It’s your body’s alarm system letting you know that something is wrong that you should correct right away. Like when the oil light comes on in your car, if you don’t do something immediately, long term damage can occur.
Your body will turn on you the longer you go without food or the longer you eat less than it needs to operate healthily. This is because your body has a built in self-preservation mechanism and food deprivation is one of those things that triggers the shields to go up and all hands to be called on deck as they say.
The most familiar defense mechanism, the one we all have experienced on these strict calorie counting diets, is a lack of appetite once food is made available again or rather when any excuse is made available — office birthday cake, family 4th of July picnic, home alone and no one is looking?
Unfortunately, people who have been starving, whether they did it to themselves or otherwise, may also experience improved efficiency of their intestines. What this means is that they become much better at absorbing nutrients so when they start eating again, the weight gain is much quicker than before. This is probably why you feel like it takes two days to gain back what it took two months to take off.
Another survival mechanism is a lowered metabolic rate. That’s right, all of those folks, who think they are going to quickly drop weight by skipping meals and starving themselves, are actually making it harder because once the body realizes it’s not getting enough to eat, it slows down the metabolism and starts conserving calories; thus, losing weight requires more and more effort and willpower.
Unfortunately, you aren’t just losing fat either. When you diet, you lose muscle mass along with the fat, especially if you don’t exercise. Then when you “give up” the starvation method and start to regain the weight, you regain fat, not muscle. Muscle consumes more calories than fat tissue. Even while a person is resting, healthy muscles burns calories while fat mostly just stores calories. (Fat is a hoarder, y’all…no wonder I’m unable to embrace my inner neat freak…) Therefore, when you replace muscle with fat, you are basically sabotaging your future attempts at losing weight, taking away the tissue that would help you lose weight just sitting there, making it more likely that you will continue the cycle.
And your body learns from experience just like you learn from experience. You know how you’ve learned to put away a little extra money to pay for the extra heating oil in the Winter? Well, your body learns from each time you diet how to be more efficient at using food. Thus, the next time you diet, losing weight will be slower and harder.
By trying to lose weight via a starvation method such as calorie counting, you are surrendering to the mainstream marketing belief that your need for food is wrong, that nature designed you wrong, that your hunger drive must be changed or corrected.
So, can’t someone choose to be beautiful and choose to eat?
Three things are required to keep each of us alive:
- Without air a person can only survive for 3 minutes.
- Without water a person can only survive three days.
- Without food a person can only survive three weeks to three months.
Everything else is nonessential. (No matter what the subliminal messages tell you.)
Have you ever heard of anyone who over-breathed? What about someone who over-drank water? You never hear of someone who limits herself to just eight glasses of water a day and if she’s still thirsty, “just goes to bed because she’s out of water for the day” — as my old WW leader might have said in the context.
The problem might be that the air isn’t pure enough or the water isn’t clean enough, but you can’t ever have too much air or drink too much water. So if you trust your body to tell you how much air and how much water you need, why can’t your body be trusted to tell you how much food it needs as well?
Was the hunger drive designed incorrectly? Do we really need to count every calorie? Keep track of every morsel?
Perhaps the problem isn’t how much we eat but what we eat?
I think perhaps many of us just don’t know how to listen to our bodies. Most of us have grown up always with processed food from grocery stores and fast food joints on every corner. Our bodies never had a chance to learn anything else. But like polluted air and unfiltered water, our bodies know poison is mucking up the machinery. It doesn’t help that we’re on this starvation cycle while we’re pumping it full of chemicals and pesticides and synthetic and mutant foods.
Several years ago, before my IgAN diagnosis, I unconsciously stopped eating pork and sausages, with a few exceptions. Then I unconsciously started eating less and less beef. Before I knew it I was technically a “flexitarian”, eating about 75% vegetarian meals. It was not difficult for me to switch to a “pescetarian” when I received my diagnosis. The truth is that my body had been speaking to me for years, telling me that meat made me feel icky. You could visibly tell the difference the day after I ate meat just how bad I felt.
That’s why I am trying out this dietary vegan thing now. I’m trying to listen to my body; I really feel that the more wholesome and natural my diet, the more healthy my body will be. I also believe that after years of trying to lose weight through various calorie counting diets that left me hungry so much of the time, my metabolism is stalled. There has to be a way to revive it through healthy eating and exercise.
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